Game industry wrestles with value of voices

August 23, 2005|By Levi Buchanan, Special to the Tribune

When the Screen Actors Guild approved a contract settlement recently for voice actors working in video games, a labor dispute ended but larger questions remain: Just how important is voice work in what has been a primarily visual medium? And how successfully will the game industry evolve now that it has some of the actor and script problems of a major Hollywood player?

In addition to higher pay, SAG had demanded residuals for successful games -- not unlike the payments actors receive for television shows. The union didn't get residuals, but it did raise the minimum wage to $759 for a four-hour voice-over stint. It also got increases in required contributions to the union's benefits plan in a contract running through 2008.

Until recently, most video game voices have been provided by hundreds of anonymous, journeyman actors. (Sometimes, even the people who developed the game would step up to the mic.) Celebrities used to turn up their noses at the idea of such work. But as the video game industry's earnings began to eclipse Hollywood's box office numbers -- the video game industry rang up more than $9.9 billion in North America in 2004 versus Hollywood's North American box office of $9.4 billion -- celebrity actors have been much more agreeable.

Rockstar's controversial "Grand Theft Auto" franchise, now embroiled in a ratings reclassification for its latest installment, still has made excellent use of the celebrity voices of actors such as James Woods, Burt Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson. And the industry is more than happy to employ them, believing they add a level of Hollywood immersion that has been missing in the past.

Midway's recent hit game "Area 51" features voice work from David Duchovny ("X-Files"), Powers Boothe ("Deadwood") and Marilyn Manson. Zach Wood, the producer of "Area 51," believes using celebrities is important because "whenever you get top talent to represent your character, it legitimizes your product. It's another angle to get people interested."

And the desire for celeb voices keeps growing, especially as more and more games are based on movies. Electronic Arts' recent "Batman Begins" game features almost the entire cast of the film, including Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson and Michael Caine. Warner Bros. has hired Clint Eastwood to voice an upcoming "Dirty Harry" video game. Electronic Arts has hired James Caan and Robert Duvall to voice their characters in an upcoming game based on "The Godfather."

Disney animated films used to be voiced by the best actor for the job; Bambi and Alice in Wonderland were not piped by the stars of their day. But modern animated movies -- especially computer-animated films from studios such as Pixar and Dreamworks -- often use celeb voices, such as Ben Stiller and Chris Rock in the recent "Madagascar," for all leads.

That same situation could easily be happening in video games. Especially as the development costs of next-gen games grow into eight figures, publishers will be looking for any hook possible to make their game more accessible.

And that may mean hiring a star hero for a seven-figure salary to voice a game, whether or not it is distracting, as was the case in Electronic Arts' "SSX Tricky," which trotted out Lucy Liu, Oliver Platt and David Arquette. Their presence had little impact and left many gamers wondering what EA could have included if it had saved the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to lasso those voices.

Top talent can be a mixed bag for video games, according to Dan Hsu, editor in chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

"What matters most is that the right voice be cast to the right role, and gamemakers aren't just grabbing celebrities just to help them sell games," Hsu says. "Some particular celebrity voices can be distracting, especially when you can hear that they're not really into it. Toby Maguire in the `Spider-Man 2' game really sounded like he wanted to be elsewhere."

Peer Schneider, network director of IGN.com (a popular Internet gaming destination), agrees. "Experienced actors, especially those who have done voice work for animated films before, can provide very lifelike narration, but it takes a good and fearless [voice-over] director to push back when takes aren't good enough and get the most out of the talent." Schneider cites "Grand Theft Auto" and Vivendi Universal's "The Chronicles of Riddick" (which starred Vin Diesel) as examples of quality voice acting from both celebrities and professional voice actors.

The question remains whether the use of professional voice work -- celebrity or journeyman -- has transformed gaming. When Microsoft's "Halo 2" last year blew the doors off with a blockbuster $125 million first day, gamers crowed mainly about the graphics and online play. Very little was said in reviews about the in-game voice acting, save for mention of comedian David Cross' take as a smarty-pants soldier better with a one-liner than his rifle.